The chapter The Doctor's Opinion at a Big Book study in Winston-Salem, NC

It was, it was really great being here. Well, this week there's looks like there's more people tonight. That's a that's a good thing.

We talked a little bit about some history. We talked a little bit about an introduction to the big Book and Alcoholics Anonymous. I talked about some current topics, some things that as informed, experienced a a members. We, you know, it's kind of our responsibility to be paying attention to

keeping an eye on and tonight, tonight what I'd like to do is, you know, start moving right in, right into the book. We went over a little bit of the forwards and the preface last week. I want to start on the doctor's opinion. Before I do that though, I want to set, I want to set the context of the doctors opinion. Bill Wilson would be going into town's hospital to get detoxed.

Bill was what what would be described in this book as a low bottom hopeless alcoholic and what a low bottom hopeless alcoholic is. It's somebody that's lost the power, choice, and control to stay away from alcohol,

and someone who's lost the power, choice, and control to moderate alcohol once they start drinking. If you if you don't have the ability to stay away from booze, you'll continue to keep drinking it. You'll find ways to drink it. You'll end up drunk even if you don't want to.

And when you start to drink, if you have that, that craving the Alcoholics have, you won't be able to just have a couple. You won't you won't be able to moderately drink. You'll get tongue chew and knee walking, not able to operate your own pants, zip or drunk every single time. You know, I mean, you ever get that, get that drunk.

So, so Bill Wilson was one of those Alcoholics. And what would happen is he would go on a run, he'd go on a Bender and he would need to be hospitalized. I mean, he would, he would just go through really, really bad delirium tremens. It talks in his story one time that he was on the 4th floor or something of his brownstone and he started to go into the DTS and he dragged his, his mattress

down the stairs all the way to a lower floor because he was afraid

he was going to run and jump through the window, you know, and go four stories down onto the, onto the pavement. You know, that's the DTS. So he, when he, when he started, when he, when he was coming off these runs, he would need to be detoxed like many of us. And he would show up at Towns Hospital,

He had a relative that had connection to towns hospitals. So he'd walk in, you know, and they'd say, oh, Bill, you know, your beds over here. And, and he, you know, he'd lay down and, and he'd start, he'd start the treatments. Now in his story, they talk a little bit about the belladonna treatments, the hydrotherapy treatments.

Very very interesting book out there

called called Slaying the Dragon. It's written by written by a wonderful historian who who basically did it, did a historical study on alcoholism treatment over the course of the last 400 years.

And he talks a little bit about belladonna treatment. He talks a little bit about hydrotherapy in this book. And you know, hydrotherapy is basically, they'll strap you to a cot, roll you into a shower cubicle with multiple heads and hit you with hot water and cold water and hot water and cold water. And, you know, I don't know how much that really does for your alcoholism, but at least it cleans you up and, and belladonna treatment, you know, I got, I've got some personal experience with belladonna.

There was the smoking area at high school. I don't know if anybody relates to this. And you gather there before high school, we start and you pass around the drugs or, you know, whatever to get through the rest of the day. And this one day this guy brought in a big sack of weeds and we're all like, well, what is that stuff? And he goes to spell a Donovan, you know, try some. It's like $5. And so a bunch of us bought this belladonna, you know, not knowing what it was or what it was going to do and ate it.

That's just kind of how we were. We'd, we'd, you know, if he had a pill in your hand, we'd grab it and we'd eat it. And then we'd say, what was that, by the way? You know, I mean, that's just, I don't know how you were in high school, but that's how I was. So we ate this belladonna and it's, it's a poison. It's it's a horrible poisonous weed with some

hallucinogenic speed like like qualities. And I went partially blind because I would, you know, over serve myself with whatever you had. And I remember the next day going into school, you know, my vision had returned. And, you know, I was saying, hey, man, did you go blind, too? You know,

really, really, really cool.

Just insane. Insane. And so I can't imagine how they would use belladonna as an alcoholism treatment. You know,

they, they used crazy stuff 7500 years ago.

One of the jobs I had was I worked at Rutgers University for many years and we were breaking up some of the Quonset Hut buildings there that were staging areas for World War 2. This is an area where, you know, they would, they would move a lot of supplies through and then ship them over over to Europe for World War Two. And we broke up the floor of this place and we found what was what was the remnants of, of a drug store. It was like where they stored the drugs and I found a full bottle

of bronchitis medication, Right, It was a full bottle of bronchitis medication. You want to know what the three main ingredients in this bronchitis medication were? Heroin, strychnine and creosote. Can you imagine taking that for your cough

for anybody that doesn't know what those are, you know, creosote is what you use to warm and eyes lumber. You know, you you soak the two by force increase so and now you have weatherproof lumber

and strychnine is is another poison. So they really didn't know what they were doing is basically my point here. And they were treating these people with whatever they could treat them with.

Doctor Bob would use a really high power sedative. He used this stuff that would knock you unconscious for two or three days. You know, he would just knock you out. It was like a knockout formula. So they really didn't know how to handle these people. But Bill was showing up in Towns hospital time and time again to get detoxed

and they would detox them and they would basically say to him, you know, Bill, you really should stop drinking. It's a good idea for you to stop drinking. And they'll say, yeah, you know, I'm done this time. And I'll go home and I'll, I'll put, I'll swear, you know, I'll write a statement in the family Bible saying I'm done this time. And you know, I'll, I'll be okay. And he never

was, you know, he never was. Now what happened was he got 12 steps by Abby Thatcher. Abby Thatcher had become had become involved with a group known as the Oxford Group. What the Oxford Group would do is basically they were in Avid

society, kind of non denominational society who were interested in reexamining and practicing 1st century Christian principles. A lot of the principles that they found in the book of Acts and the four Gospels as far as opera,

you know, methodology for for, for us. They tried to, they tried to practice it and some of the things that they practiced and see if this doesn't ring a little bit like the steps, some of the things they practiced was a deflation

that would be like surrender. They practiced, they practice restitution, which would be kind of like our making amends. They practice confession, which would be a little bit like our, our fifth step. And they, they practice prayer, meditation, obviously. And then they practice witnessing, which would be trying to try to talk to somebody else into having a conversion experience, you know, a religious conversion experience. So they had these basic practices in the Oxford Group

and every once in a while someone was a drunk would stumble into the Oxford Group and they would get sober because it, because if they started to practice these spiritual principles, it resulted in sobriety

and sometimes recovery. It just did. It's, it's, you know, it's not what we know, it's not what we think, it's not what we say, it's not what we believe. It's what we do that brings about a recovery. It's how we act. So they weren't trying to sober up drunks, the Oxford Group, they were, they were trying, they were trying to save people's souls. But when a drunk would stumble in there and actually practice these principles,

the the drunks would get sober. And there was, you know, the Oxford Group wasn't the only organization. That was the Emanuel movement,

the Jacoby Club. You know, I think we, most of us have heard of the Washingtonians. There were a lot of these groups that if you became involved enough, if you participated in them enough, you would get sober and your life would start to to fall into place. Now, Eddie Thatcher shows up at, at Bill Wilson's and

and sits down and basically says, you know, you know, Bill, I, I think I have a solution here. And the solution basically is it's a spiritual solution. Now,

up until that point in time in Towns hospital, there was a classification of Alcoholics

that these doctors knew they couldn't touch. They knew these Alcoholics were hopeless because they could detox them, they could fix some of the chronic physical conditions. They could, they could get them to eat and take vitamins and maybe a little bit of exercise. But they knew as soon as they let them go and they went back out into the real world, they would get drunk. And they knew that this was the classification of the hopeless alcoholic and the people of Towns,

Charlie Towns and William Silkworth just hated dealing with them

because, you know, it's, you know, you just know that it's no matter what you do, it's not going to be sufficient to be able to help this person. And when you're dealing with their families too, it's very, very hard to say to a family member. Look, you know, Uncle Harry here is hopeless. He's going to drink himself to death, you know, protect the finances. I mean, you know, it's really hard to to carry that type of a message to to the family. So, so they they were, you know, they didn't really like the,

the hopeless Alcoholics. Nobody really wanted to deal with a normal hospitals. Remember Towns is a hospital specializing in drug and alcohol treatment. There weren't a lot of those back in the mid 30s. And if you went to a regular hospital, the regular hospitals didn't want to take you at this point in time.

You know, if you were a chronic alcoholic and you show up for medical treatment all the time, if they could find a way not to take you, they would. Because what we do is we show up in treatment, you know, begging to get in. A day or so later, we start to realize that, hey, they're not doing it right here.

You know that, you know, they should do it my way and and you know, this is wrong and that's wrong. And I'm going to talk to who's the boss I need to talk to. And, and, and they leave with a resentment, you know, and don't pay their bill. Okay. And a week later, they're back. You know,

you gotta help me. You gotta help me. I mean, who would want, who would want to deal with somebody like that? That's how we show up, you know, so, so basically what happens is Bill Wilson gets 12 step by Debbie Thatcher. He participates in the in the spiritual

renewal process that the Oscar group had set up basically the tenants and the practices of the Oxford. He said, OK, you know, I'm I'm out of plans. I'll, I'll give this a shot and he gets sober and part of part of the, the thing that the

reason I think that we're all here tonight is on his detox bed. The thought crosses his mind that there are a lot of Alcoholics out there. This, this news that Eddie Thatcher brought me. I know that this is a message of depth and weight. I know that this, this will, this will, if, if I really dive into this, I'll recover from alcoholism

on his detox that he decides to spend the rest of his life carrying the message to Alcoholics that still suffer.

Now, there was a lot of people that got sober in the auction group. There's books out there that were written by Oxford group alcoholic members who got sober way before AA. You know, one of one of my favorites is called I was a Pagan. You know, that's an old book that was written by an Oxford Group member who was an alcoholic who got so.

And there was one called The Big Bender. That's another one. You know, you can you can research these old Oxford Group books and see that, you know, there were conversions, there were recoveries way before Bill Wilson. Now

Bill gets about the business of carrying the message to other Alcoholics. And one of the things he does is he goes back into towns hospital and basically says

Silky, you know, I, I think I've got it. I think I've got an answer to alcoholism. Let me, you know, let me practice on some of the patients in here. And it says in here with some misgivings, you know, we allowed him to. And that's basically where,

where the relationship developed between William V Silkworth, the chief physician at Towns Hospital, and Bill Wilson. Now, when this book was being written, Bill said, would you please write, please, please write something for me? You know, we we need we need a medical estimate of our plan of recovery.

Now, now, Silk worth writing this letter is pretty amazing that he even did it because you have to understand he's from the medical, the scientific part of this whole thing. Everything has to be provable. You know, it has, you know, science

tests must be repeatable. It needs to be peer reviewed. I mean, you don't just make something up. If you're a scientist, you follow best practices that, you know, come about through a lot of trials and a lot of tribulations. And all of a sudden, all of a sudden Bill Wilson with this religious angle. Because you got to remember the Oxford Group was religious and there was no a, a until this book was, was published. There was only Oxford Group alcoholic members.

For him to basically say,

OK, this guy over here who's helping drunks get sober, there's something really significant going on here. There's something that's really working and we need to pay attention to it is amazing because it's like a sign. It would be like a scientist saying, hey,

you know, yeah, we've we've got, you know, Beth Israel Hospital behind us. But there's some guys down the street within Ouija board that are doing better than we are. Let's let's pay attention to the people with the Luigi board. I mean it, you know, it would have been, it would have been, it would have been a professional suicide for him to do something like that. So he didn't sign the letter. He wrote it, but he didn't sign it

because it was an opinion. These are there was no science behind a spiritual awakening and there is none today.

There's no science behind a spiritual awakening. It's something that is, that is observable, but it's not quantifiable. You know what I mean? And that's one of the reasons why AA and professional treatment have such a distance between each other,

because it because it's, you know, it's very, very difficult for the scientific community to really understand what the hell goes on in these meanings. You know, we've sent you to, to the $40,000 treatment centers. We've sent you to 20 of them. And, and you need a plumber named Harry in AA and you get sober,

you know, that house going on. So, you know, there's, there's a, there's a little bit of, there's a little bit of, you know, friendly distance. Let's let's just say that. But the fact that Silkworth wrote this letter is amazing. I'm going to, I'm going to start reading a little bit in here and I'm going to read what I think is, you know, the, the important parts and just share a little bit on it.

We have Alcoholics novice. This is Bill.

We have Alcoholics Anonymous believe that the reader will be interested in the medical estimate of the plan of recovery described in this book. Convincing testimony must surely come from medical men who have had experience with the sufferings of our members and have witnessed our return to health. Because Bill would go in there and the people that Towns hospital couldn't help, he would help. If they would participate in the things that he asked them to participate in, they would get sober.

A well known doctor, chief physician at a nationally prominent hospital specializing in alcoholic and drug addiction, gave Alcoholics Anonymous this letter. Now Silkworth. It was estimated that he treated over 20,000. You know, I'm really bad with numbers. I'm numerical,

so if I ever quote a number, you know, don't take that to the bank. But you know, I know it was in the 10s of thousands of Alcoholics that this guy, this guy worked with. That'll give you a clue about what's going on. You'll you'll start to see patterns, you'll start to see classifications,

you'll start to see see the scale of alcoholism. You'll start to get a clue about, you know, what type of chances certain people have and what type of chances other people don't have.

Now, I've got a copy of this original letter. What Bill did he? Bill took a little bit of artistic license and took the letter that Silkworth wrote and chopped it up a little bit. And I think he improved on it. He made a lot of sense out of it. But it's very, very interesting to read the original letter,

you know, which you can find online if if you're so inclined.

Uh, anyway, he identifies himself by just saying I have specialized in the treatment of alcoholism for many years.

In late 34I attended a patient who, though yet had been a competent businessman of good earning capacity, was an alcoholic of the type I had come to regard as hopeless.

Now there's still hopeless Alcoholics out there.

There still are. And a hopeless alcoholic is just someone that self knowledge is not going to help them. It's not going to recover them.

Teaching them relapse prevention techniques is not going to going to be at a long lasting solution. Showing them where their triggers are is not really going to help them very much when they're on the way to the bar. You know, we're, we're, we're, we're dealing with, we're dealing with somebody, you know, right now who were very, very close to, who decided after going, you know,

through like 3 days of outpatient that, you know, all this outpatient really is, you know, a drag. I need to go a bar and you'll have a have a drink, you know, just to relax from all this outpatient, you know, I mean, let me think about it, you know, and and it made perfect sense to them.

Now, in the course of his third treatment, it actually wasn't his third treatment. It was about his 12th because they found they found records of Bill being admitted to Towns hospital about 12 times. He acquired certain ideas concerning a possible means of recovery. Those certain ideas came from

who shared with him the Oxford Group Spiritual Practices. As part of this rehabilitation, he commenced to present his conception to other Alcoholics, impressing upon them that they must do likewise with still others. Now this is very, very important.

My war cry for the year is as responsible members of alcoholic synonymous in good standing. We need to start paying more and more attention to the chapter working with others.

A as a whole has moved so far away from the 12 step work that's described in the chapter Working with others that we should all be ashamed of ourselves, myself included. But what it's what it's stating in here is Bill Wilson's means of recovery

was basically sharing that means of recovery with other people. It was very, very important to carry the message to other people in the hospital. And this is something that's that silk worth noticed. This has become the basis of a rapidly growing fellowship of these men and their families.

We're going to look back in 50 years, we're going to look back on addiction and alcoholism treatment and we're going to think that it was unbelievably barbaric. The type of the type of the 28 day programs and and the outpatients and all the stuff that's going on now. We're going to look back in 50 years

and say, my God, how barbaric that treatment was because it, it did not include the families,

the families of Alcoholics are made so gravely ill. And then we as Alcoholics, you know, saunter into AA, you know, get a sponsor, go through the steps, you know, start, start carrying commitments to, to, to, to detoxes and rehabs and jails and start to put our lives together.

And a lot of times what we're doing is we're moving away from the family who really doesn't understand how ill they are. They're so ill. They don't know they're ill and they don't. And not knowing they're ill, they're not motivated to get any better,

You know, So more and more today, really responsible treatment practitioners and hopefully really responsible a A members are recognizing that the family really needs to not be ignored. Now, sometimes they want nothing to do with Al Anon or any of that other stuff or the family programs. And you know, you can't force, you can't force somebody to do it.

But more and more, as responsible and compassionate people, we need to be understanding that the that some form of help should be available. If it's possible for us to help, we should be helping.

Because in the early days of Alcoholics Anonymous, the families were included in the meetings. If if you showed up to one of Doctor Bob's meetings by yourself, he'd say, where the hell is your wife? Let's go get her. You know, I mean, they were that serious about including the family

this man in over 100 others appear to have recovered. There's that word again. Recovered.

I personally know scores of cases who are of the type with whom other methods had failed completely. These facts appear to be of extreme medical importance because of the extraordinary possibilities of rapid growth inherent in this group. They may they may mark a new epoch in the annals of alcoholism. That's strong talk.

What Silk Worth is basically saying is we charge $2000 a week, you know, for our treatment.

These guys that are coming in and doing it for fun and for free are going to mark a new era in the in the epoch of alcoholism. Pay attention to what they're doing. It took a lot of guts for him to do this

you And then he says

these men may well have a remedy for thousands of such situations. You may rely absolutely on anything they say about themselves.

That's very, very powerful.

Then Bill is back at it. The physician who had our request gave us this letter, has been kind enough to enlarge upon his views in another statement which follows. In this statement he confirms what we have suffered from alcoholic torture. Must believe that the body of the alcoholic is quite as abnormal as his mind.

It did not satisfy us to be told that we could not control our drinking just because we were maladjusted to life, That were we, we were in full flight from reality, or we were outright mental defectives. These things were true to some extent, in fact to a considerable extent with some of us, but we are sure that our bodies were second as well and our belief. Any picture of the alcoholic which leaves out this physical factor is incomplete.

Body, mind, spirit

if you're an alcoholic, you are you are ill both of the body of the mind and the spirit. It's an illness that affects the body, mind and the spirit. Alcoholism is an unorthodox illness. All right, I I happen to have just been convinced in the last two months by an addictions doctor about

the alcoholism is is a disease. I was 95% there,

OK. And I've, I've gone over the hump and I now am convinced because of the scientific evidence that this doctor presented that alcoholism is, is a disease. It it, it is. It is most definitely a disease, but it's an unorthodox disease.

There's not a lot of other diseases that affect you mentally, that affect you spiritually.

Certainly diseases affect you physically, but when you think about having a disease, you think about going to a doctor, going to some specialists and getting treated for that disease.

And there may be an operation, there may be, you know, antibiotics, who knows? But if you follow that program, you'll be able to get better. You don't have to get a sponsor. You don't have to get a Home group. You don't have to put a dollar in the basket every Thursday night. You go to a doctor and you get treated and you get better. Alcoholism, being an unorthodox illness affecting us both both physically, mentally and spiritually,

needs to be treated in an unorthodox, excuse me, in an unorthodox manner.

This is another area that really freaks out a lot of the medical establishment, a lot of the psychiatric establishment that sometimes, sometimes even the people who are treating us for alcoholism in a professional capacity do not understand this. They don't understand the spiritual part. They don't understand that we need to start to become rigorously honest. There are things that make no sense

to them, yet it made a lot of sense to Bill Wilson because he came from a spiritual program

that led to his recovery.

The doctor Siri that we have an allergy to alcohol interests us as laymen. Our opinion to its soundness may of course mean little, but as X prom drinkers, we can say that his explanation makes good sense. It explains many things for which we cannot otherwise account.

Allergy, you know, allergies, not really the best way to to describe what happens to us when we put alcohol in our body. That's, that's one thing that's that's kind of been become clear in the last 20 or 30 years. It's not the best way to describe it. However,

if you think of an allergy as an abnormal reaction to a food or a beverage,

you can say our abnormal reaction is the phenomenon of craving. When we drink alcohol, what it does is it it creates a craving for more alcohol.

Happens with the alcoholic is when they take a drink, it the drink asks for a second drink, demands another drink, insists on the drink after that. And you end up you end up getting drunk. And how many times have we been out there drinking with normal people? And you know, they can have two or three and they've had enough. But once we've started drinking, we got to finish the deal. That's that's the craving, OK. That's what they call the allergy. I don't know that allergy is the best way

describe it. It's, but it's a craving. It's a phenomenon of craving. It's a, it's a physical compulsion. Actually our liver and our pancreas and our whole digestion system and cardiovascular system is, is crying out for more of that alcohol. And This is why 9 times out of 10, when we drink, we get drunk and we pass out.

But we workout our solution on the spiritual as well as the altruistic plane. We favor hospitalization for the alcoholic who is jittery or be fought, but we work out our solution on the spiritual as well as the altruistic blame.

The spiritual basically is the 12 step process. The 12 step process is how to be spiritual 101

altruism is is basically doing things for fun and for free. That's really what altruism is. It's being compassionate, it's being charitable, it's giving of your time. It's having a service ethic. So that's how we work out our problem. We work it out spiritually and we work it out altruistically. We find ways to be of service, and each one of us needs to do that.

Every single time I see somebody that relapses, they've fallen short somewhere. And almost invariably it's. What were you doing every day to help other people? Nothing

Well, you know, why would you expect to stay sober if you're not doing anything for anybody else? It says in this book, 12 places that we have, we have to we have to give back what, what, what we, what we what we have that we have to put the the welfare of other people ahead of our own. I mean, these are instructions in the,

you know, why would you expect to stay sober if if you're not living altruistically

hospitalization for the alcoholic who is very jittery and be fogged, jittery or be fogged. That's that's a 1938 way of saying somebody that is going into alcohol withdrawal or the delirium tremens.

We, you know, one of the things is, is I believe in, in wet drunk work. You know, I've done a lot of wet drunk work. I've done enough wet drunk work to know that you keep airline bottles of booze around for the 12 step call and big garbage bags in the back of your car. You know, I mean, I've been around the block enough to know the tools that you need for wet trunk work.

Don't try, don't try to detox somebody at your house

if they go into alcohol withdrawal. One of the things that happens it in alcohol withdrawal is, is your, your pulse rate, your, your blood pressure goes up to really, really high levels and we stroke out or, or, or or aorta pops like a garden hose

and there goes your warranty if that happens, you know what I mean? And you don't, you don't want, you don't, you don't want your, you don't want somebody in the back of your car, you know who, who's just died. So you need to get them to a detox. Now, I'm not saying our 12 step work has to be putting in a 28th day rehab,

put them in long term rehab, put them in an IOP. I'm not saying that at all. But when somebody is jittery or be fogged, we favor hospitalization. You need to get them safe, physically safe. And a lot of times, a lot of times what I have those airline bottles of booze for

is for in between me getting them at their house and getting them to the hospital, you know, I don't want them going into alcohol withdrawal, you know, on me. So sometimes you, sometimes you have to feed them the booze while you get them to the detox.

More often than not, what Doctor Bob would do is he would give you peraldehyde. Peraldehyde is the knockout stuff I was talking about earlier. You know, that just that just flattens you out for a couple of days. Today what they'll do is they'll give you Ativan, they'll give you Librium or whatever just so that just so that you're safe while you detox.

More often than not, it is imperative that a man's brain be cleared before he is approached and he has then a better chance of understanding and accepting what we have to offer. So has anybody in here ever done 12 step work like, you know, carrying the message to somebody who's in a blackout? You know, I I've wasted my time doing that a couple of times.

Yeah, I gave my best pitch and when I called him in the morning to see how they were doing, I said who the hell are you?

I didn't remember any of it. It's we need to let them. We need to let them. The best possible time to do 12 step work is when they're actually. So

here's the second part of the letter.

The subject presented in this book seems to me to be of paramount importance to those affected with alcoholic addiction. I say this after many years experience as medical director of one of the oldest hospitals in the country training alcoholic and drug addiction. There was therefore a sense of real satisfaction when I was asked to contribute a few words on a subject which is covered in such masterly detail in these pages.

Here's an important Here's an important paragraph, but it's it was very hard for me to understand when I first read it. We doctors have realized for a long time that some form of moral psychology was of urgent importance to Alcoholics. But it's it's application presented difficulties beyond our conception. What with our ultra moderate standards, our scientific approach to everything, we are perhaps not well equipped to apply the powers of goods that lie outside our synthetic knowledge. He's basically stating what his problem is with

the hopeless alcoholic now, and he's writing it like a doctor. I heard somebody many years ago explain it to me from a spiritual angle and not a medical one, and this is how they did it. We doctors have realized for a long time that some form of spiritual awakening was of urgent importance to Alcoholics, but its application presented difficulties beyond our conception.

Well, with our ultra modern standards, our scientific approach to everything, we are perhaps not well equipped, equipped

to apply the powers of God that lie outside our synthetic knowledge. It's very difficult for a doctor to help you have a spiritual awakening or a conversion experience. It's not, it's not in their bag of tricks. You can't, you can't put it in a needle and push it into their arm.

It's something that it's something that takes takes takes time. It takes one alcoholic really working with another alcoholic.

Many years ago, one of the leading contributors to this book came under our care in this hospital, and while here he acquired some ideas which he put into practical application at once. Later he requested the privilege of being allowed to tell his story to other patients here, and with some misgivings, we consented.

This was this was basically when Bill started to learn how to do a 12 set call.

The original 12 step call is basically going and sitting with somebody and asking them, can I talk to you? You know, it will, it would help me if I could share some stuff about myself. And then you sit with the alcoholic and you tell them your story. When, when I was when I first showed up in Alcoholics Anonymous, there was this wonderful old timer. He got sober in 1959. You know, he'd been around a long time and he asked me to come over his house and help him with some stuff. You know, I was out of work,

you know, if I helped me pay me to do some stuff and you know, I helped them with some work. And then it, then he goes, let's sit out at the table and he sat me down at his kitchen table and he told me his story. He told he, he shared what it was like, what happened and what it's like today. He not only talked about his, his alcoholism and how that presented and how that manifested, but he talked about his, a, a experience and how he found a recovery process in Alcoholics Anonymous. And it was, it was a powerful experience for me.

That was an old fashioned 12 step call.

The cases we have followed through have been most interesting. In fact, many of them are amazing. The unselfishness of these men as we have come to know them, the entire absence of profit motive and their community spirit is indeed inspiring to one who has labored long and wearily in this alcoholic field.

They believe in themselves and still more, in the power which pulls chronic Alcoholics back from the gates of death.

Our our problem is powerlessness. You know, we admit we're powerless over alcohol.

If we admit that's our problem, then it's a logical assumption that power is the solution to our problem. And what Doctor Silkworth saw is he saw this power that would bring these Alcoholics, chronic Alcoholics, back from the gates of death. He saw it happening. He's doing everything he can, you know, in this prominent hospital specializing in drug and alcohol treatment. But Bill.

And the boys

are, are actually the people who are participating with Bill and the boys are having transformational recovery experiences. And, you know, Silkworth is just looking at this, you know, saying basically, great. I'm I'm so glad that that there's there's something that may be of help because 99 times out of 100, these guys die. These chronic Alcoholics die.

Of course, an alcoholic ought to be freed from his physical craving for liquor,

and this often requires a definite hospital procedure before psychological meds methods can be of maximum benefit. Again, he's saying, then you need to detox these people. They, they need to get rid of that physical craving.

I'm someone who believes in, you know, accurate terminology. So often we, we hear things in Alcoholics Anonymous used the wrong way. Someone will come out, someone will raise their hand and there they'll be sharing. They'll say, you know, you know when I came into the program. Okay, well right there

you don't come into the program, you come into the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous and you work a 12 step program.

The same thing happens. The same thing happens with the term craving. You'll hear somebody who's sober six months going, man, I was I was craving a drink last night.

Well, you don't crave unless alcohols in your body. You may be you, you, you know you, you may be preoccupied with drinking, but you're not craving because if you were craving, you'd be drunk. Craving is not something that is very easy to be

We believe in. So suggested a few years ago that the action of alcohol on these chronic Alcoholics is a manifestation of an allergy. That the phenomenon of craving is limited to this class and never occurs in the average temperate drinker.

These allergic types can never safely use alcohol in any form at all, And once having formed the habit and found they cannot break it once having lost their self-confidence, what is losing yourself confidence? That's being able to make a decision to stay away from booze and have that mean anything. Once they've lost their self-confidence, their reliance upon things human, their problems pile up on them

and become astonishingly difficult to solve. Anybody in here ever sponsor a newcomer? They've got some problems that are astonishingly difficult for them to solve, right? Because they're trying to solve them, that's why.

Ah, 4th The emotional appeal seldom suffices. Anybody in here ever get the frothy emotional appeal aimed at you? Oh, you know what? Please, you got to stop drinking for me, I promise.

Oh God. Or else the judge. The judge will give you some frothy, emotional appeal.

You're going away for 10 years. I won't. I'm not drinking anymore, I promise.

But none of that works. None of those threats, you know, the family begging you, none of that works. That's not a sufficient defense against the first drink. Unfortunately, if you're a chronic alcoholic and you know, we're the whole big book assumes that you're you're a chronic low bottom hopeless alcohol,

many people in a a today or not, and that's actually a good thing. If you're not a chronic low bottom alcoholic and you do this stuff, you're going to have the same spiritual awakening and the same shot, you know, shot in the arm as far as quality of life that everybody else gets,

you know, But the chronic alcoholic has to do this stuff or they're gonna die now. That's the difference.

The message which can interest and hold these alcoholic people must have depth and weight. In nearly all cases, their ideals must be grounded in a power greater than themselves if they are to recreate their lives.

A message of depth and weight. I believe in carrying a message of depth and way.

Mike, I want to I want to tell you about my first experience with Ed. This is about 1984 and alcohol consumption was getting my attention. Okay. Very, very few things was I able to participate in because because drinking was a full time job. I was barely hanging on to some employment. But the second I got out of work, I started drinking hard liquor and, you know, I was in a blackout every night.

Takes a lot of energy to drink like that. You don't have time to like run around and do other stuff. So

so I decide, man, you know, this guy comes and he he doesn't have a place to stay. And I'm in the house by myself for a couple months and I say, you can stay with me for a while. And I talk him into taking me to an Amy, you know, I basically say, you know, my drink is really, really, I can't not drink. And that's got me concerned and and I feel ill every morning and

I just, I just would like to figure out how to control this thing. So would you take me through an alien?

They said sure. So we went up to say anything in town and I got drunk to go to it. I figured, figured, doesn't that make sense? You know today, Amy, aren't you supposed to drink? You know, when you especially your first time like